


Fog

by helens78



Category: Rob Roy
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-12-04
Updated: 2003-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-05 11:35:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/41328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helens78/pseuds/helens78
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alan MacDonald's last moments, and some memories of him from his laird.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fog

_Fog is not a horseman's friend, and worse still to be caught in the fog when there are miles to go before you're home and you've a great sack of coin in your lap._

* * *

Alan MacDonald had dreams of America, aye, but the dreams of a better future were not without their cost. Did he not know that going overseas would mean starting over, leaving family and friends behind? Aye, he knew that, and so these were dreams he did not take on lightly. And more to the point, he would nae have gone away without sending so much as a word of farewell to his brothers. To his clan.

To his laird.

* * *

_Some would say you don't have time to think when you're riding for your life. I say you have time to think too much, to consider all the ways you came here and how all the different decisions you could have made could have led you somewhere else entirely. Everything's in sharp focus when it's your life you're tasting in the back of your mouth, when you know it's a matter of time until you find out whether you're going to live out the night._

* * *

A laird cannot take so much on his shoulders that he's bound and rooted to one place. He has to know which things are his fault, and which he can change, and how to leave the rest to God's hands. I thought I was better at this. And mostly, I have been, God forgive me, but can I not blame myself for Alan's death?

We never even found his body.

* * *

_Everything's in sharp focus, but that doesn't help against the fog. I can hear the hooves following behind me, can almost smell the breath of the man on the wind. But I can't see. Can't see to aim, can't see when I fire, and it's no surprise at all when he only laughs and starts the chase again._

_And when the rope takes me off my horse and lands me on my back, it's not a surprise, not really. But oh, Christ, if I had time to be angry, there'd be a fury in me to set the stones on fire. It all makes sense now._

_Forgive me, laird._

* * *

I love my wife, and I love my children. I love my people. My clan. As I live and breathe, I love them all. And it was once that I found myself over the hills with Alan MacDonald, and discovered I loved him too, and the play of his muscles under his skin, the feel of his thighs pressed hard against my chest while I took him. Took him under a half-moon with stars lighting the sky everywhere, and listened to him make promises without breathing so much as a word.

* * *

_There's desperation, and it's what drives me to try to hide the coin in the tree._

_And there's hatred, which is what I'm feeling when the sword runs through me, and I have to watch him take it anyway._

_A better man than me would say he doesn't mind the dying so much._

_I fucking mind the dying. I do._

_But I mind what Rob's going to think of me more._

* * *

Trouble with Alan's promises was that we both knew I wasn't going to give them back. It was one thing to spend a warm spring night together, but something else to look for more than that, and I had a wife and child already. And so we never spoke of it again, and his loyalty to me as his brother and his laird never changed.

But he'd never talked of America before that night. And when two months had gone and we'd not spoken and I'd found reasons not to be alone with him, America came faster and faster to his lips.

* * *

_I mind the dying, and I mind what Rob will think of me. I know where my soul is going, and I mind that as well, having never had the chance to pray forgiveness._

_I mind the fog most, I think. The bloody damned fog, that's kept my eyes from seeing what was straight in front of me, with the coin and not the note. The fog that kept me from killing the bastard who's now dragging me away. The fog that hid the rope that took me to my back in the dirt._

_I'm face up now, and I can feel my breath almost leaving me. Face up, and I can almost see the sky._

_I deserve the stars tonight. Deserve to see the stars that were out the night I gave love and body and soul to Robert Roy MacGregor._

_I mind the goddamned fog._

_-end-_


End file.
